.\" Copyright (c) 1980 Regents of the University of California.
.\" All rights reserved.  The Berkeley software License Agreement
.\" specifies the terms and conditions for redistribution.
.\"
.\"	@(#)aliases.5	6.1.1 (2.11BSD) 1996/10/22
.\"
.TH ALIASES 5 "October 22, 1996"
.UC 4
.SH NAME
aliases \- aliases file for sendmail
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B /etc/aliases
.SH DESCRIPTION
This file describes user id aliases used by
.I /usr/sbin/sendmail.
It is formatted as a series of lines of the form
.in +0.5i
name: name_1, name2, name_3, . . .
.in
The
.I name
is the name to alias, and the
.I name_n
are the aliases for that name.
Lines beginning with white space are continuation lines.
Lines beginning with `\|#\|' are comments.
.PP
Aliasing occurs only on local names.
Loops can not occur, since no message will be sent to any person more than once.
.LP
After aliasing has been done, local and valid recipients who have a
``.forward'' file in their home directory have messages forwarded to the
list of users defined in that file.
.PP
This is only the raw data file; the actual aliasing information is
placed into a binary format in the files
.I /etc/aliases.dir
and
.I /etc/aliases.pag
using the program
.IR newaliases (1).
A
.I newaliases
command should be executed each time the aliases file is changed for the
change to take effect.
.SH "SEE  ALSO"
newaliases(1), dbm(3X), sendmail(8)
.br
SENDMAIL Installation and Operation Guide.
.br
SENDMAIL An Internetwork Mail Router.
.SH BUGS
Because of restrictions in
.IR dbm (3X)
a single alias cannot contain more than about 1000 bytes of information.
You can get longer aliases by ``chaining''; that is, make the last name in
the alias be a dummy name which is a continuation alias.
